When you’ve been in the industry for as long as we have, you start to pick up on a few tricks of the trade. Of course, in digital marketing, there’s always a bit of trial and error.
In the end, however, you can’t help but get a “gut instinct” for what works and what doesn’t.
In this article, we wanted to share 5 time-tested marketing hacks that will allow you to connect with customers, optimize existing campaigns, and drive more traffic to your website.
Best Marketing Hacks Ever!
We’ve used these hacks for many projects and can tell you first-hand that no matter what new technology emerges, or marketing skills and tools there are to master, these tricks are here to stay!
Create an Editorial Calendar
Before you can get to work, you need a plan, right? And before you can make a plan, you need to set goals. This is where an editorial calendar comes into play.
At Brandography, we utilize marketing calendars to help us set KPIs (key performance indicators); build comprehensive content outlines; and track our progress in quarterly recaps.
Our calendars always include a range of marketing touch points (e.g., blog, email, social, etc.) and SEO strategies (e.g., keywords, meta, alt text, etc.). This process allows our content team to easily collaborate with our design, web development and PPC experts—all while ensuring everyone is on the same page, working towards the same goals.
Of course, a good rule of thumb is that your calendar should never be stringent. It should be flexible. For this reason, we like to create quarterly calendars with some wiggle room to include any new promotions, insights, updates, or public appearances that we want to highlight.
If you’d like to learn more about creating an editorial calendar that aligns with your marketing KPIs, contact us for samples of our process and work!
Watch Your Competitors’ Rankings
They say that imitation is the highest form of flattery. This couldn’t be more true than with your competitors’ digital performance. By keeping tabs on their organic/paid traffic and keyword rankings, you can identify any opportunities they might be missing out on—and opportunities you’re missing out on, too.
It also helps you understand your shared audience and get a glimpse at the type of content (blogs, videos, podcasts, graphics, etc,) they like engaging with and sharing with others in their social networks.
Recycle, Reuse Older Content
Got old content lying around? Why not put it back to work! If your site is housing blog articles that date all the way back to 2015 (or earlier), it’s time to give them an SEO refresh!
We like to look at how these older landing pages and blog articles are performing to see if there’s any SEO juice left to squeeze out. Once we determine this, we can decide if the content needs a facelift or a little help from its friends. We refer to this strategy as Keep, Kill, or Combine.
Basically, our goal is to keep what’s working, remove what’s not, and combine other related resources to create a stronger piece of content that’s optimized using SEO best practices and works to engage and educate our readers.
Utilize AI Tools
With so many amazing marketing tools available, it’s hard to find the right ones to fit your company’s needs and end goals.
You’re probably already utilizing a few AI/ML tools now, such as GA4 (Google Analytics), Grammarly, ChatFuel, or Hubspot SEO. And there are likely more to come in the future.
Leveraging AI/ML tools into your marketing strategy can help you dive deeper into what your customers want, need, and will engage with. They also offer creative tools to help you create or optimize existing email or ad campaigns to increase ROIs.
One tool that we’re currently obsessed with these days is Feedly. Its software allows you to scan numerous blog posts, publications, Google searches, and even tweets at a glance—hence the term “feed” in the name. It’s an ideal tool for content creators who are trying to stay on trend with the latest news and industry insights.
The tool also features a helpful little robot named Leo. As your AI research assistant, Leo helps you prioritize topics and keywords. This feature helps you quickly scan news and trending topics you want and omit the ones you don’t. And the more you use Leo, the better he becomes at knowing the type of content you want to read.
For Sci-Fi enthusiasts, this might sound a bit scary, but for writers trying to stay on trend and relevant, this tool comes in handy!
Monitor Data
Part of the reason we’ve learned which marketing strategies work and which ones are better left alone is because we’re constantly checking our work.
Monitoring ad performance, keyword rankings, backlinks, and user engagements are just a few metrics we always keep an eye on. This data allows us to adjust our strategy, when needed, and identify new opportunities to help us drive traffic and generate authentic leads.
Stay Connected
Want more marketing hacks? Stay connected to our blog to find industry news and marketing tips to help you build (or optimize) your digital strategy!
If you’d like to learn how we can help you improve your current ad performance or content marketing campaigns, contact us today so we can chat!
